Jon Rombach is a writer and river guide headquartered in Oregon's Wallowa Valley. His newspaper column, 'And Furthermore,' appears in the Wallowa County Chieftain. The Gearboat Chronicles cover life on the river, updated every week at windingwatersrafting.com. Publications include Utne Reader, Backpacker, Sports Afield, Mother Earth News and other fine, upstanding journals you may or may not have ever heard of.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Some bird with a crooked neck

I think this is a plumber bird. It's got a P-trap neck. It can get clogged with little fish or crawdads if you're not careful. And DO NOT put cleaning products down the beak. That causes all sorts of trouble.

This heron flapped in on a foggy morn and stopped to survey the little irrigation streams from the cottonwood snags over on the neighbor's patch.

Awww...thanks, Wallowa County

Next year, I'm going for best cheeseburger.

'And Furthermore' column

Gearboat Chronicles

I worked for years as a radio announcer and dj inside a small, soundproof room. Loved radio, but talking at that microphone in the teeny-tiny booth finally brought on the stir crazies. Shifting to newspaper reporter brought on the just crazies. I needed some outdoors and river guiding in Hells Canyon certainly took care of that. The Gearboat Chronicles are dispatches from the river, updated every Monday. Click that picture up there to connect with the Winding Waters River Expeditions site.

Subscribe To

Follow by Email

Followers

'Compost Apprentice' in 'Readings for Writers'

It's awfully nice to be in a table of contents with the likes of Ed Abbey, Maya Angelou, Mike Royko, Dave Barry and Malcolm X. My favorite discussion question: "How does Rombach deal with situations that call for four-letter words?" Answer: Usually, he uses them.

'Number 98: Eulogy for a Red Bus'

Reports of the demise of Glacier's red buses were greatly exaggerated. By me. I drove one in college, then wrote this when the fleet was being retired. Ford stepped in, the buses got overhauls and they're still on the road.

The Sasquatch In Us All

Sports Afield

Nice things people say

Moonshine Ink should be spilled on every community. This independent monthly is published by Mayumi Elegado and her band of freedom fighters in Truckee, CA. See for yourself at moonshineink.com.

I moved some words around for them a while back, and Mayumi slipped this in an issue:

"Copy editor Jon Rombach is adept and freaking funny. In one of his recent emails, he had this to say about chopping up copy: '...added the new ones and took a machete to the previous ones. It's at 620 words. I can amputate something else to get to 550 but they might begin reading like fortune cookies...this 'asap' hasn't been very 's' – but I've been attacked by a string of people who interpret ‘busy’ and ‘no-time-right-now’ as their cue to tell a long yarn about how other people interrupt them when they're trying to get [stuff] done. I'm now cloistered in a dark remove, and will push ahead.'"________Former Chieftain editor Michael Burkett may or may not cheat at Scrabble. I'm not saying he does. The following is from his farewell Chieftain column:

"...I'm going to miss being the first human being on the planet to read the latest column by Jon Rombach. Lest you've somehow failed to notice, this local fellow is a national-level talent. By the way, if you're a fan of easy money, challenge Jon to a game of Scrabble. Even if you've lost half your brain in a tragic...."